Born near Greenville, South Carolina, on January 26, 1790, Daniel Dunklin moved first to Kentucky and then to Missouri, settling with his widowed mother at Mine-a-Breton near Potosi in 1810. He studied law and was admitted to the Missouri bar, though he was not very active as an attorney. His political career began in 1815 when Territorial Governor William Clark appointed him sheriff of Washington County, the same year he married his boyhood sweetheart, Emily Haley. After building a small tavern in Potosi that became a meeting place for discussion of society and politics, he supported education, helped found the Potosi Academy, donated more than 500 volumes to it, and helped pay for its buildings. In July 1822, after delegates meeting at his tavern reached a stalemate in choosing a candidate for the state legislature, they suggested Dunklin, who was then nominated and later elected, serving from 1822 to 1824. After four years in Potosi, during which his mining investments proved profitable, he returned to politics in 1828 as lieutenant governor and was elected governor in 1832 with strong rural support. His greatest interest was schools, and he is often called the father of Missouri's public school system. In 1833 the legislature authorized the governor to appoint a committee to formulate a complete system of common and public schools, and in 1835 the General Assembly established Missouri's public school system by law, setting a minimum school year, a basic curriculum, and local taxation for support. In 1834 he also recommended choosing a site for a state university and helping fund it through land sales, and five years later the University of Missouri became a reality. Dunklin resigned three months before the end of his term after President Andrew Jackson appointed him surveyor general for Missouri and Illinois, but conflicts between those duties and his business interests led him to retire to Potosi. In 1840 he sold his holdings there and moved to the Herculaneum area, where he bought about 570 acres north of Herculaneum, built a large house near the present town of Riverside, and called it Maje. In 1843 Governor Thomas Reynolds appointed him commissioner to adjust and designate the boundary between Missouri and Arkansas, a post he held until his death. After contracting pneumonia in July 1844, he died on July 25, 1844, and was buried two days later in a field near Maje. Emily was buried with him there in 1851. Their son, James L. Dunklin, inherited the estate, but after financial troubles he was forced to sell it in 1885, reserving one acre that became the present Dunklin Cemetery. Following the sale, Daniel and Emily were exhumed and reinterred there. On August 25, 1965, the Missouri State Park Board agreed to accept the cemetery for a memorial park in his remembrance, an action that foreshadowed a 1967 statute to mark and maintain the graves of former Missouri governors that were not in perpetual care cemeteries.